Structural and manufactured product failures typically occur from overload, from severe environmental loading, from deterioration, or from a combination of events. However, failure may also occur due to the design of a structure or manufactured product that was not adequate to survive a normal operating environment.
Structural failures typically occur at load bearing members, at connections, and in the foundation. A failure may occur due to overload, vibration, major environmental events, and inadequacy of design. Structural failures typically involve a significant loss of property and result in personal injury and worse.
Failure of manufactured product typically occur in the product and at the interface with other components of the assembly. A failure may occur due to overload, to vibration leading to fatigue and fracture, and inadequacy of design. Failure of a manufactured product may indicate a design flaw that may be wide spread.
Adequacy of design becomes a central issue when either structures or manufactured products fail. How does one determine whether or not the design was adequate for the environment it was subjected to? A couple of procedures are available to check the adequacy of design.
Subject a similar structure or manufactured product to similar environmental events and see how it responds. This may or may not be practical for many structures and manufactured products.
Simulate the product subjected to similar environmental events. Computer simulation of structural response and manufactured product response to variations of environments provides accurate and timely information about the adequacy of a design.
Information is required to develop an accurate simulation of a structure or product failure. This information will generally be obtained from the structural designer or from the manufacturer of the product under evaluation.
Topology of the structure or product.
What does the structure or product look like, including all relevant dimensions.
What does the assembly look like, including all interface connections.
Material properties.
Engineering properties of the materials used to fabricate the structure or manufactured product, including material plasticity properties.
Boundary Conditions.
Environmental forces acting on the structure or manufactured product, including magnitude, direction, and placement.
Constraints holding the structure or product from moving off into space.
The stress and deformation analysis will be carried-out using finite element analysis procedures. Either one of the two most widely used finite element analysis programs used world wide today, ANSYS and MSC/NASTRAN, will be used for the simulation of the structure or manufactured product subjected to its environment.
Stress magnitude and distribution at regions of interest and throughout the structure or product.
Deformation at specific regions of interest and throughout the structure or product.
Likelihood of failure of the structure or product subjected to the specified applied forces and constraints.
CSEI has the experience and expertise to perform a wide range of stress analyses of fabricated structures and manufactured products.
CSEI has the capability to run simulations aimed at determining the potential for structural and manufactured product failure.
CSEI has analyzed potential failure of structures and products fabricated from a wide range of Engineering materials.
CSEI has the capability to perform structural progressive failure analyses that may result in structural collapse.